I find this report interesting, even though a bit dated, from Nov 2005.  The trend will only have increased since then, so its relevant. This means that the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary Internet activity on any given day. The Pew Internet Project data show that on a typical day, email use is still the top Internet activity. On any given day, about 52% of American Internet users are sending and receiving email, up from 45% in June of 2004. Source: Pew Internet: Search engine use Thinking about the next generation of banking … Continue reading Pew Internet: Search engine use up significantly

 Speculation mounts on what Bank of America might do next. “You could probably go pick two dozen large international banking operations that they could go after, and the list may be too long to note. They could also be “transformational” in other domestic financial operations outside of banking, but the street is into more of a de-conglomerization attitude these days so that may not be in the works. They have just recently integrated the large acquisition of MBNA for credit cards, so we’ll have to see what are the next obvious candidates. Bank of America has gotten more into mortgage … Continue reading "24/7 Wall St.: Weekend Edition: Who Will Bank of America Acquire Next? And Where?"

Over at The Marketers Consortium, Elana Anderson of Forrester Research, is guest host.  In this post she asks if Customer Centricity is a realistic goal.  This is something I looked at here, and co-incidentally (honest) I referred to a Forrester article in that one. This was my comment, and I wanted to elaborate after on this. Customer centricity is an essential goal. Anything less is going to be product focussed, or single channel focussed. These will fail because the media savvy customer is protecting themselves from the results of such activities. We have to consider the media savvy consumer of the … Continue reading Customer centricity is an essential goal – some attributes for marketing technology

This introduction to an upcoming conference speech by Art D’Silva at the Royal Bank of Canada, is indicative of why they are both number one in Canada, and why their results have been so strong. “RBC Royal Bank’s emerging business direction and customer strategy was confirmed by a 1997 study that challenged conventional thinking. The study revealed that customers wanted a banking relationship where they were well understood, their needs anticipated, and their business was valued. To RBC Royal Bank, the future became clear: the bank would find ways to be increasingly responsive and client-focused in a competitive environment where … Continue reading “From “Current Value” to “Potential Value”…Using IT to create a corporate vision — 2006 e-Financial WorldExpo”

Straight and simple is the only way to describe this offer from Bank of America.  Register for online banking, and they’ll pay you $15. “With Online Banking from Bank of America, you’ll enjoy the convenience, control and security to manage your finances online. And now for a limited time only, when you enroll by clicking below, you’ll get $15. With our free Online Banking service, you can quickly and easily: Check recent account activity bullet Transfer funds between your Bank of America accounts Receive and pay bills online View and receive your account statement online Enroll in Online Banking today … Continue reading Bank of America | Test Drive Online Banking Offer

Reading this press release really made me think about the expression “paving the cowpath.  How on earth would they need 90,000 unique URL’s at CIBC?  This is totally symptomatic of bank thinking.  No startup/ web 2.0 company would think this way.  But I understand the thinking only too well.  “here we have all these intranet sites, and information pieces, which we must document and support, because they are there”.  If we do the math, and consider how long any one employee would take to get through even 1% of that lot, we will all have grey hairs. Source: Bryce Johnson … Continue reading CIBC Today" – CIBC Intranet Portal